On Monday, many Marylanders will kick back, fire up the barbecue and give thanks for a three-day weekend. On this year’s Labor Day, let’s also remember the origins of the holiday: to honor the work of men and women who make our communities run.
Please take a moment to consider — and thank — the women and men that deliver the supports and services the State provides: safe roads and bridges, public safety, help for your kids in schools, colleges and universities, registering a car, or a will. Without their labor where would we be?
AFSCME Council 3 represents more than 26,000 state and higher education employees around Maryland, from Oakland to Ocean City. Our members include state social workers, juvenile services staff, inspectors who enforce our state laws including business safety requirement and road and transit safety, among others. They serve the state with dignity and pride, and in return hope to receive respect for the jobs they do, along with compensation to keep their families in the middle class. But Maryland’s public employees are falling farther behind due to chronic understaffing and pay that hasn’t kept up with the cost of living.
In January of 2018 the state published the “Executive Branch Staffing Adequacy Study” that highlighted the need for over 2,600 additional employees to fill vacancies and create new additional positions.
Chronic under staffing has meant state employees workloads have expanded to the breaking point, mandated overtime is skyrocketing, and work environments are increasingly dangerous.
Our state’s social workers who handle cases of child and elder abuse struggle to manage hundreds of cases. Our prisons’ corrections officers are forced to monitor inmates at a dangerous ratio of 100 to 1. Our juvenile services staff can’t perform educational programs because there is not enough staff to ensure a structured and safe environment. Our staff in state mental hospitals, who are working to safeguard the health and safety of Marylanders identified as a risk to themselves or others, lack the staff to adequately respond to an incident.
Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration has willfully understaffed these critical state services, and taxpayers and workers are suffering the consequences. In Frederick County, Department of Juvenile Services Victor Cullen Center has had two riots in recent years. Baltimore City Department of Social Services, a state agency, has remained under a consent decree for over 30 years, in part because they don’t have enough staff and resources for foster care.
In the Department of Corrections, where we are short over 1,000 officers, assaults on staff and inmates is a regular occurrence. Our state hospital system, designed primarily for mental and developmental disorders, is increasingly unsafe. Last week, an AFSCME member at the Spring Grove Hospital Center was violently beaten unconscious and hospitalized for over five days at Shock-Trauma.
Because of this chronic understaffing and poor working conditions, recruitment and retention is a growing problem. In order to compete with other public and private sector employers for smart and hardworking people, the state needs to be a better employer. Potential employees shouldn’t stand for promises of mediocre pay, long, often grueling work, inadequate training and equipment, and a “do more with less” attitude of the Hogan administration. The state of Maryland needs to improve its reputation as an employer in order to recruit and retain good people.
This Labor Day season, let’s honor our state workers, and call on the Hogan Administration to get serious about providing adequate staffing and support for our state services and workers.
Patrick Moran is president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 3, based in Baltimore, it is the largest union of State and University workers in Maryland.
